ADVENT: Love (Week 4)
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ADVENT: LOVE
Luke 1:29-30 NLT: Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God!
“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” -Tim Keller
Lamentations 3:19-24 NIV: I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
“The love of God is not something vague or abstract; it is personal and redemptive.” -John Calvin (1509–1564)
John 1:14 NLT: 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.
The central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably His heart is set on us. - Tim Keller
“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” -St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
“He [the Christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.” CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
I John 3:1 NIV: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
“Love never fails.” I Corinthians 13:8 NIV
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37 NIV
“Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment.” -St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)
God of all ages, in the birth of Christ your boundless love for your people shattered the power of darkness. Be born in us with that same love and light, that our song may blend with all the choirs of heaven and earth to the glory of your holy name. Amen.
